Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Halloween used to be more fun when all the homeschoolers were in one discussion pool. After shunning psychology for years, some of Halloween's detractors have adopted it (an outdated form), and plan to condition their children to think about Jesus (and other Biblical figures) when they eat certain candy and see jack-o-lanterns.http://sandradodd.com/halloweenWait... only click that link if your kids' Halloween costumes are ready, because you might be in there a while.

I've updated the speaking page (conferences) some. It was also one of the first few pages I ever made, and I know more now.http://sandradodd.com/speakingIt's not pretty, but it's more for reference than reading. Mostly it's my own record of where I've spoken. I have a scrap book, kind of, where I keep my speaker's badge and the program, but it filled up and now it's a notebook and a little pile.

Cartoons! Defense of kids watching cartoons, a page I don't guess I had ever announced. It wasn't linked anywhere, and was sitting there with a big formatting error. So I added to it, spruced it up, and here it is, with illustrations and its own linkshttp://sandradodd.com/t/cartoonsThat "t" in the middle is for tv. When I first started my site I didn't know at all what I was doing. Now I kinda know what I'm doing, but the old urls are still sometimes mysterious. If you forget how to get there in the future, go to sandradodd.com/tv and you should be able to find it again.

Creating webpages this way is like making quilts from materials other people have donated, but each scrap has life-changing power and sparkle. THANK YOU to those who write these wonderful bits, and to those who send them to me and say "Use this one!"

Real children's lives are made better all over the world when their parents can relax and smile and say "okay, let's do that!"

Thursday, October 18, 2007

To those using Internet Explorer, this will mean little to nothing, but I have a note at the end...

I've changed favicons for the unschooling pages. There used to be a little duck. Now there's a tree—the smallest of the four trees Bo made for me. That's what should show to the left of the URL in the address box on a browser. Eventually the SCA pages will all have the duck.

I lost the background on the unschooling page while dinking around with this change. I deleted my backgrounds folder. That's probably a good thing. That background was left over from when my unschooling page was on expage.com and they counted the characters and the fanciest art I could have was this:

I have read (yesterday) that if one on Internet Explorer saves a link to a site, the favicon will show. I read it on the internet, so it must be true. (eeep)

I like those trees Bo made me. They're to represent me and my three children, and I like the symbolism of big strong trees that grow from such small seeds.

And I fixed it so that the new tree art replaces the old tree art on the error and search pageshttp://sandradodd.com/searchIf you use my search boxes you should get the four trees Bo King made me, instead of the one tree on a book I used to use, which only appears now (I hope) athttp://sandradodd.com/bookmotif

Friday, October 5, 2007

Halloween isn't spread equally over the English-speaking world, but if Halloween worries are applicable to your family, here are collected comments concerning Halloween candy and how a family might handle it:

There's nothing new there right now, but I'm willing to add accounts of successes with loosening up, and if anyone has photos of Halloween costumes or candy or parties that don't have a home on the web, I'm willing to host those too. We can have a happy Halloween page for others to see in years to come.

There are some photos of Holly in Minneapolis (and Kelly Traaseth's daughters Abbi and Kyra) here, and more will be up to see within a few days:http://sandradodd.blogspot.com (posts in early October, 2007--for those who see this later)

There's Holly with Paul Bunyon, and not the real Paul Bunyon, we understand. This is some kind of department-store Paul Bunyon for the kids, but the real Paul Bunyon is in Bemidji and we'll see him later.